A Simple Truth
by the.eye.does.not.SEE
Summary: Post-1x23. Trust comes slower now, than it did before. [J&K find their way back to what's left.]


_**A/N** : Inspired by a poem I read on tumblr (_ _jadeshadows . tumblr post/145536490685/dear-you-wherever-you-ended-up-i-envy-you). Please enjoy._

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It takes some time for them to fall back together. After the deaths and the investigation, and the hearings and the endless interrogations and questions and polygraphs… Trust comes slower now, than it did before, but he tells himself this is a good thing. He tells himself this is how it has to be, if it's going to last.

And it will last; he takes every precaution to ensure this.

He is incredibly tentative with her, with the way he speaks to her and holds her and treats her. Any time he even thinks about raising his voice at her, he remembers all the things he yelled at her in those interrogations; he remembers all those unofficial visits to her holding cell, where he stood and shouted and demanded answers and she sat there and repeated again and again that eventually he'd understand. He remembers all the horrible things he said to her, all the horrible things he accused her of, and he nearly drowns in guilt, but somehow she saves him. She does something simple: she smiles at him or she holds his hand or she says his name, in that soft way she has, somehow drawing out the four letters into something much longer, something much more tender.

In return, he smiles back, or he pulls her close for a hug, or he kisses her gently on the head. They are made up of unbelievably tender gestures now. It would shock an earlier incarnation of him, the lengths he is able to go to in search of being soft with her. When they kiss, there is not fire, but a low smoldering, a dim heat. When they touch, there is not electricity, but a familiar calm. He thinks this is what married couples must feel like, after years together. The thought buoys him, and makes the moments where she pulls away, or pushes him back, easier to swallow.

He doesn't mind. He can take the gentle rejection. And he can wait. He's waited all his life for her, it seems like; he can wait a few weeks or months more.

They do not talk about the time before, or the time apart. They don't talk about the dead bodies—not David's or Mayfair's or Taylor's or that skeleton in the burned-out barn—and they do not talk about the live ones, either. The team has all come back together, for the most part, though they lost some of the easy camaraderie they had before. They don't talk about the old days.

They live in the present, and look to the future.

And it arrives, trundling slowly and changing things without warning, as it always has. One night after they go out to dinner, and he walks her home, she invites him inside. It isn't an unusual request. They have been together for months now, and they have had drinks at her place, dinners at her place; they have watched movies and gone over cases and relaxed in a companionable silence. But there is something different, this time, about how she asks. There is something different in the way she looks at him, and the way she holds his hand. She feels closer than usual.

He follows her inside, and he knows, even when knowing is only just a hope. In all these months together, all these months of scraping back together some semblance of a happy relationship, they have yet to do much of anything physical. Apart from the photos at work, he has never seen her naked. He has never touched her naked.

He thinks, as she takes his hand and leads him back into her bedroom, that no one has, at least not in this second life.

He should've known better, he thinks later, but in the moment, there is nothing that tips him off. They have a few drinks beforehand, each sipping at their liquid courage, and then she kisses him. She is not quite drunk, but not fully sober either, and neither is he, but that's fine. After the months of soft touches and silent looks and little more than kisses, he isn't surprised that they both need a bit of a push to get going in the right direction.

She falls back onto the bed first, and then he falls on top of her. They are both fully clothed still, but when she touches him, he can feel the heat of her hands through his shirt, as close and hot as if he were already naked.

It does not take long. They pull at each others' clothes, finding buttons and zippers and all manner of places to tug and pull and maybe curse a little bit, when something gets stuck. She laughs at his impatience—he'll always remember that afterwards, that one, perfect, carefree laugh—and he only pretends to be annoyed at how she makes fun of him.

He thinks in his mind, _This is how it's supposed to be_ , and he doesn't take notice of anything else.

He does not notice how she is not hesitant when she reaches for him; he does not notice how she never spares a second for worry; he does not notice that she keeps her eyes closed, almost the whole time, as she buries her face in his neck and holds him close. He does not notice that he is more making love _to_ her, than with her.

He has waited a long time, he has noticed a great many things, and in those few minutes, while they are together and he is inside her, all he has time to notice is that it feels so much better, being with her in real life, than it ever has in any of his dreams.

She is quiet after, and though she does nothing so obvious as put her back to him, the silence is enough of a sign. The fact that she is gone from bed when he wakes in the morning, is more than enough of a sign.

The diamond ring that falls out from under her pillow, while he's re-making the bed, is more of a shot straight to the gut than any sort of sign.

He picks it up, and sits on the edge of the bed, and stares at it for a while. He recognizes it—it went missing from the evidence locker about eight months ago, just a few weeks after Jane was released from interrogation and allowed to resume her regular life and work. There had been an inquiry into the ring's disappearance, but nothing had come of it. Given the fact that the ring contained relatively small diamonds, and that the man it had been found with, in the burnt wreckage of that barn, was dead, very few resources had been put towards its recovery. The Bureau had better things to think about than one petty theft of an abandoned ring that no one really cared about in the first place.

He stares at it now, here, sitting on her bed the morning after they made love in it for the first time, and he wants to be angry. He wants to feel betrayed. But he doesn't.

Mostly he just feels sad—and not even for himself, but for her. Whatever life she'd had with that dead man, a ring stolen from evidence is all she has left, and that lone fact is more inherently depressing than anything else he could make himself feel.

So he puts the ring back under the pillow where he found it, and then gets up and gets dressed. In the kitchen, he finds a note from her. _Out getting breakfast. Be back soon if there isn't a line_. So he helps himself to a glass of juice from her fridge, and sits in the kitchen to wait.

It doesn't take long; he's barely been up fifteen minutes by the time he hears her key in the lock, and then she's stepping inside, saying good morning, and passing him coffee and a bagel. She apologizes for the fact that she doesn't have much in the way of food, and that she isn't much of a cook, and before he can even think, he offers to remedy that situation.

She smiles at the suggestion, and murmurs as she butters her bagel that that would be nice. They eat quietly for a few minutes, and when it's time to head into work, she cleans up after them while he waits in the living room. He looks around at all her things here, and thinks of his own home, of the things he keeps there. He has more than a few mementos of Taylor. He has things from her life that he probably shouldn't have. Some he keeps out in plain sight, others he hides in places only he knows about. It is not something he likes acknowledging, but it is true nonetheless. Like that ring under her pillow, it is a fact of life, and it must be accepted.

He has Taylor. He has her things and her memory and the grief that comes with the loss of her. He has the ability—the privilege—of mourning her publicly, and of not having to explain himself. He watches Jane finish up in the kitchen, and start towards him with a smile, and he thinks he can let her have the dead man's ring. He can let her have whatever she wants from his memory, whatever she needs.

So long as he has her.

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 _ **A/N** : It's been a very long while since I've written for these two. If you have thoughts, I'd love to hear them. Thank you very much for reading._


End file.
